“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion," tweeted the 44th president of the United States in the aftermath of white nationalists marching their hate through Charlottesville, Va. The evils of learned prejudice, born in fear of the...

Summer has brought several hits — and extensions — to the Chicago theater, allowing you still to catch some fine artistic experiences before the cares of the fall intrude. Steep Theatre's summer production of Cordelia Lynn's "Lela & Co." was supposed to be done by Aug. 19, but director Robin Witt's...

"Aladdin" ✭✭✭ "Aladdin," the most frenetic and cartoonish of Disney's screen-to-stage musicals, officially opened its first national tour in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. And Adam Jacobs, his gleaming white teeth, his charming costar Isabelle McCalla as Princess Jasmine and the rest have...

The Neo-Futurists’ 2017-18 season will include three world premieres by Kirsten Riiber, Trevor Dawkins and Lily Mooney, the company announced Wednesday. The first Prime Time production will be Riiber’s “Tangles and Plaques” (Oct. 12-Nov. 18), a participatory experience merging understandings of...

Hamilton

Montego Glover and Gregory Treco are heading in to the Chicago production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical "Hamilton," and Daniel Breaker and Karen Olivo are heading out, producer Jeffrey Seller announced Thursday. Breaker has played the antagonist Aaron Burr in the hip-hop Founding Fathers...

Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Puerto Rican nationalist whose prison sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in January, told the Chicago public radio station WBEZ on Tuesday night that he expects to be in the audience at the Chicago production of "Hamilton" in late August, watching the author...

Barack and Michelle Obama wave goodbye to their guests, smile at each other, put on their pajamas and yawn. The first lady heads toward bed. But first, the president of the United States pauses to pull out a recording from his collection. As the most powerful couple in the world fall asleep, they...

This week's Showcase features a song from Disney's "Aladdin," now in its final weeks at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. Jacob Dickey, who stars as the loveable street rat who wins the heart of a princess, sings "Proud of Your Boy," an Alan Menken and Howard Ashman song cut from the movie that made...

A comedy show might not seem like the ideal place to solicit relationship advice, but Sunday night at Park West — which is the most romantically inclined of Chicago’s comedy venues, if anyone’s tracking that — two couples made their way to the stage and received a few tips (and a lot of teasing)...

When Keith Elliott, Todd Kiech and Harriet Ross presented the first Dance for Life in June 1992, Chicago’s dance community was in crisis. Friends and colleagues were dying at alarming rates of a disease that no one fully understood. Dance for Life was an attempt to do something, to come together,...

It feels like a long time ago that a band of dance misfits formed Chicago Dance Crash — smooshing dance forms together to create a unique fusion style that has helped launch hip-hop onto the concert dance stage in Chicago. For the past five of Crash's 15-year history, the ship has been steered...

Thodos Dance Chicago's performance in the "Made in Chicago" series at the Auditorium Theatre in March marked the end of the group's run as an ensemble company, after artistic director Melissa Thodos announced she would disband her 25-year-old company to focus on independent projects. After "Made...

Chicago Tap Theatre's "Changes," now at Stage 773, is a full-length narrative tap dance set to the music of David Bowie. There's not nearly enough space on Stage 773's tiny Pro Theater for a science-fiction tap odyssey about space angels, their evil, benevolent overlord and an astronaut-protagonist...

"Dear Evan Hansen," the emotionally charged and wholly original musical about a troubled high school student whose very human travails explode over the heartless channels of social media, emerged triumphant at the 71st annual Tony Awards Sunday at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. "Evan Hansen"...

The sudden exit of a spouse can clear the stubborn male mind, as can the well-timed slam of a door. Thus scholars and students have argued for years over whether Henrik Ibsen, the author of the proto-feminist drama "A Doll's House," actually left open the slight possibility that the self-absorbed...

Most works of art dealing with the post-traumatic stress suffered by those who served and saw action overseas have dealt with the war in Vietnam or the wars in Iraq. The so-called Greatest Generation, meanwhile, has usually been assumed by Hollywood and the TV networks to have come back home, got...

Malted milk balls, chocolate bars, sweet jars and other candied treats of all delights are stacked high in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. You'd expect that — right? — at a musical called "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a show based on the most famous and beloved of all the Roald Dahl grotesque...

Beyond Chicago

Thomas Middleton, whose co-authored 1622 play “The Changeling” was the most compelling and timely show I saw at the Stratford Festival of Canada this summer, wrote about lusty sex, crude male power and raw female desire. He has been a target for the censor for nearly 400 years. Middleton was in...